New PACS®

A new edition of the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme® is now available from the American Institute of Physics. Introduced in the 1970s by AIP and updated every two years, PACS is used to categorize physics and astronomy literature—from AIP, the American Physical Society, and many other publishers—for journal subject indexes, catalogs, and online bibliographic databases. In the new PACS, for example, papers related to Bose–Einstein condensates, which were previously lumped together, are subdivided into six categories. This change, says Safia Hameed, who manages AIP’s physics classification section, reflects the needs of a growing area of research. Since PACS was put on the Web a few years ago, she adds, the number of publications using it has swelled. The 2003 PACS can be accessed online at http://www.aip.org/pacs/. Print copies may be obtained free of charge by sending a request to mailto:[email protected].